I recently obtained Discovery Launchpad 1.3 and wanted to add my one and only account - i was very confused at first and was unsure how the launchpad finds the current account.
After a google search and some personal insight into how games and game servers work the following may be helpful to people who have issues with this program.
When you first installed Freelancer 1.0 the registry ( your windows registry - see regedit ) saves this information in the following location -
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\1.0
Looking at the 1.0 folder on the right in regedit you will see
InstallKey - this is the code from the freelancer installation CD
MPAccountName - this is labelled as CODE in Discovery Launcher
MPAccountNameSig - this is labelled as Signature in Discovery Launcher
If after you install Discovery Launcher you are unable to retrieve the account - open regedit and navigate to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\1.0
Write down the MPAccountName and MPAccountNameSig use these to fill in a New Account in the Launcher - at the top of the Account Details page you can enter something like account 1 or whatever you want as this is just a reference and means to sort the accounts in a human manner.
Please note: Freelancer Discovery 4.86 and all freelancer modded servers etc use this registry information location for your MPAccountName and MPAccountNameSig - there is NO registry location for Discovery account names etc.
When you double click an account to Activate it Discovery Launchpad writes the new Code and Signature to the registry so the information in Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft Games\Freelancer\1.0 gets changed.
If you have not been able to retrieve an earlier Code and Signature the best way to retrieve this information is possibly from the Server Admin where you played last or the most. They should have your Code and Signature in their database however you will probably have to prove who you are in some way so as to avoid your account being passed to the wrong person.
Please note that when you are using Regedit you should be very careful as you can easily create problems for your Operating System - if you are unsure please read up on how to open and use Regedit before using it or ask a computer professional to help you that you know and trust explicitly.
This information is what I have learnt in the process of using Discovery Launchpad - I would request the Author to change the names for Code and Signature to read MPAccountName and MPAccountNameSig or possibly a small section in the readme to reflect what they mean.
For those of you who are confused - only your Account Name and Signature are stored on your computer - you characters/ships are stored on the Server Database - in the same way a bank stores your real life money and you use a pin and signature to access this real life cash. To completely own the ship/character you would have to have a copy of the server database stored on your computer as well as your account name and signature.
Thank you for an awesome application program +100 all round for this.
